In the many stories there are about social life there is a tide line of those about groups of friends who have gone away together on some trip. A common decision has had to be made and rather than offer the choice to others or even compromise, one side has tried to make impositions according to their own whims or reasoning. Anecdotally, this seems to happen less among groups of men but wherever it does happen the overpowering sense from the injured party is of unhappy, understandable resentment about a lack of choice.
Having no choice really upsets people. “Why do you have to be the boss of me?” says my son, aggrieved. I sympathise even while I know that despite his helpfulness and many competencies I cannot but feel if he were not reminded, his hamster would die of thirst and we would rarely get to school on time never mind with clean teeth, clean uniform and homework completed, instead of the all-strikes we manage with reasonable frequency just now. He has after all only just turned seven.
Even while we nurture our children, feed them as well as we can, ensure they are outside as much as possible and suggest and introduce them to different experiences, surely a key component of happy, confident children is autonomy. I don't want my son sobbing at twenty to nine because he hasn't autonomously done his homework and he thinks he's going to get into trouble. I have tried letting that run to see if they learn autonomy from it. My elder son found that sort of independence suddenly around age 8. But children are all different and besides they live in the present. The younger the child the more they live in that present brimful with things to explore, distract and enjoy. That is why they can need help with planning things like homework.
While I don’t think children are given nearly enough credit for the things they can do, the ethics they hold and the insights they have, children are not autonomous. Besides love and care they need support, guidance and help. A child is inextricably linked to its family and when people have to do things together and the person making many of the decisions is the adult then sometimes that child just does have to traipse around shops nobody really wants to be in. Making the best of these situations is I feel a lesson in itself.
While we may sometimes oblige our children to do things, dancing is not the same. We can’t oblige another to dance with us, or make it difficult and embarrassing for a partner we would like to dance with to decline - which is nearly the same thing. The opposite now applies. Our good manners by now are refined such that while, socially, we may propose to an adult, who has more free agency than a child, to join us in some activity, of course we do not try to impose it, still less something as personal as dancing tango.
A related if more radical example is that video. Generally we say there is something wrong with trying to make people do things they don't want to do. It operates on at least two levels. It is not OK to impose something on someone who doesn't want to and it is really not OK to do so when the person cannot look after themselves. That is because while say temporarily drunk we know that the person might well not agree to our proposal in sober circumstances.
The difference with obliging a child - who is also vulnerable and cannot look after itself - to, say, do their homework is because we have good reason to think it is in their interests and it stems from a relationship of genuine care and responsibility.
In dance, unless they are a couple, there is no relationship of such genuine care and trust that the guy doesn't have to walk up to ask a girl to dance. A guy who walks up doesn't really care what the girl feels else he wouldn't make things difficult for her. Obviously, an unwanted dance stemming from such circumstances, and that she yet feels she cannot refuse, is never going to be anything but an ordeal - at least for her.
The mystery for me is - why don't some guys realise this?
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